Artistential Crisis

I’ve had my fair share of existential crisis experiences in my life. One might say more than my fair share. Today I am experiencing something new, which I think is best explained as “an existential crisis, but art.”

Long story short, I like this image:

That is a good looking image, right there! It has appeal and style, and I am content to look at that image for a long time to just admire the craftsmanship. I downloaded this image to use as reference (along with a bunch of other images to refer to) for the timer in Weekend Panda’s upcoming first game, The Death of Mr. Fishy.

In about sixty seconds I made a plain circle image to use as a base. Then for 45 minutes I attempted to make that circle look better than a plain circle and utterly failed.

Everything I did to the circle made the circle look worse. It was as though I couldn’t figure out how to do art. The reference images stared back at me, amplifying my failure.

I have long known that I am no great artist. Oh I have an average level of skill at it, but I’m a long way from anything close to mastery. Mastery comes from practice, and I have not dedicated enough of my life to that practice. I’ve mostly skated by.

The problem is I am now in a situation where our lives depend on my art. Skating by no longer covers it. Now I have to figure this out, because I can’t ignore the problem and hope it will go away.